Recently on Vixid.Noisepages: Power-Keying and Transparency with Channel Masks

I’ve had my VJX16-4 for around 6 months now. It’s no secret that I think it’s an amazing piece of kit, but it’s a tribute to the vision of those crazy Frenchies that every time I think I’m ready to review the thing, I discover something else exciting and have to spend another couple of weeks exploring the new techniques and possibilities made available to me.

The above video shows some advanced uses of “Channel Mask” keying. The VJX’s keyer functions allow you to select any of the 4 tracks as a “Key Layer” for Colour-, Chroma- or Lumakeying. Additionally, there are “RGB Mask” functions, which use the Red, Green or Blue channel of a selected layer as an alpha mask for the keyed layer. This allows you to use one layer to individually mask the other three layers, or do titling with detailed transparency as displayed above.

As far as I’m aware, no other mixer has this RGB Mask capability. It’s a deceptively simple thing, but once you spend some time experimenting with it, an ocean of possibilities flood your skull, and you need to go for a quiet lie down somewhere.

I have a project launching soon which uses this technique to pretty exciting effect. In the meantime there’s more technical information at Vixid.Noisepages.

It's actually quite common – I'd even say `required` feature on broadcast quality consoles to allow for a 'third' source for keying/masking, which is rolled into the "M/E" section of the mixer (which stands for "Mix/Effects"). A more correct way of stating the above would be "As far as I'm aware, no other mixer ~under $10k~ has this type of capability. " (The Grass Valley Indigo AV is the least expensive mixer I know has this feature… perhaps the MX-70 has it?

The caveat to my statement, and what is truly unique (as far as I know) is the RGB channel masking (vs using the combined luma channel). It is definitely a killer creative feature on the Vixid, and you're not really far off the mark : )

@Johnny: Thanks for the clarification. I should have been clearer that I was referring to the RGB Masks when I said "no other mixer has this type of capability".

Specifics aside, it is seriously exciting to have this kind of possibility in a sub-$10K unit.

@toby: Yes indeed, it's funny how long it took for the hardware to catch up with software. However, I think it's going to take a while for software to catch up with the live input capabilities of the VJX. Even at SD.

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